Inaction

Penn State’s reputation will be forever tarnished

July 15, 2012

When the initial reports of the Penn State sexual abuse scandal surfaced last fall, countless members of the university's student body and alumni vilified then-assistant coach Mike McQueary.

In a grand jury testimony last fall, McQueary claimed he had encountered former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky sodomizing a child victim in the shower in 2002. Without calling law enforcement, McQueary told the grand jury he instead reported the incident to head coach Joe Paterno.

Nothing was done.

In the days and weeks following his testimony, McQueary received countless death threats, was kept from his job on the Nittany Lions sidelines and was placed under police protection. Interestingly, McQueary's received threats were not because of his failure to report the incident to law enforcement or his nearly decadelong inaction. Instead the assistant coach was fearing for his life because he ratted out an icon.

Snitches get stitches.

But now, after Thursday's report released by former FBI Director Louis Freeh showed that Paterno knew of Sandusky's actions and helped to hide it, no amount of stitches could begin to repair the image of major college football's all-time winningest coach.

One thing this scandal has helped to pin down - Red Sanders was wrong: Winning isn't the only thing.

Former West Virginia and Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden was stripped of 12 wins from his coaching record for using players who were involved in an academic cheating scandal in 2006 and 2007. Investigations by the NCAA found no wrongdoing by Bowden, but the coach - second only to Paterno on the all-time wins list - still lost the victories.

Paterno should now lose all of his - at least since 2002. While Bowden's 12 stripped victories at Florida State may been because of NCAA violations, Paterno's victories came after violations of a moral code far more important than rules established by any sport's governing body.

According to Freeh's report, Paterno burried Sandusky's actions to protect the university's image - an image Paterno used to convince blue-chip players and their parents that his Penn State program was in a class of its own.

It was ... just a more heinous one than any of us could have ever imagined.